Dental crowns and dental bridges are often lumped together, which makes sense given the roles that they play in preserving your dental health. While the two serve very different functions, they can also come together to help safeguard your teeth.
Here at Hillsdale Dental Care, our team of dental experts, led by Drs. Roge Jacob and Magdalena Azzarelli, routinely turn to dental crowns and bridges to serve a wide variety of needs.
Here’s a look at how a dental bridge or a dental crown (or both) may give you something to smile about.
A dental crown is a cap that we place over your tooth in order to protect, strengthen, or restore it. To give you an idea of its many uses, let’s take a look at some of the more common ones.
Our goal when it comes to dental work is to preserve as much of your tooth as possible, especially the roots that go down into your jawbone. If you have a tooth that can no longer sustain fillings or that’s had a root canal, we place a crown over the tooth to protect it from further disease and damage.
If you have a tooth that’s badly cracked or worn down, we can use a dental crown to cover the tooth to protect it from further damage.
Sometimes a tooth can become discolored, and no amount of whitening can help. With a dental crown, we can restore your row of pearly whites.
If you choose to replace a missing tooth with a dental implant, we use a crown to cover the post.
Dental bridges are an effective and economical way to replace a single tooth or several teeth in a row.
With a traditional bridge, we use the teeth on both sides of the gap to attach the pontic(s), which are replacement teeth. Traditional bridges are where crowns and bridges meet, as we place crowns over your abutment teeth to give them the strength they need to hold your bridge in place. (We can also use a cantilever bridge, which attaches to only one crown on one side.)
If you’re missing front teeth, we typically recommend a Maryland bridge, which attaches to a framework that we bond to the backs of your existing teeth.
We also offer implant-supported bridges, which are a far more stable and sustainable solution to replacing several missing teeth in a row than partial dentures.
In all cases, your bridge provides a non-removable option that helps restore your ability to smile, chew, and speak with ease.
We use only the best materials available when we create crowns and bridges, and they should last anywhere from 10-20 years if you take good care of them. This means adhering to your daily cleaning regimen and avoiding anything that may damage the prosthetics, such as chewing ice.
If you’d like to learn more about the roles that dental bridges and dental crowns can play in your dental health, contact our office in San Jose, California, to set up an appointment.
